Curt Schilling's Bloody Sock from Game Two of the 2004 World Series Expected to Bring $100,000+ at Heritage Auctions

January 17, 2013

NEW YORK – “The Bloody Sock” worn by pitcher Curt Schilling in his profoundly gutsy performance in Game Two of the 2004 World Series, consigned by Schilling himself, will be sold as part of Heritage Auctions’ Feb. 23 Platinum Night Sports event at the Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion (Ukrainian Institute of America) at 2 E. 79th Street (at 5th Ave.). It carries a pre-auction estimate of $100,000+.

“This historic Red Sox relic serves as the physical incarnation of the exorcism of ‘The Curse of the Bambino just as the ‘The Buckner Ball’ is the curse’s embodiment,” said Chris Ivy, Director of Vintage Sports Memorabilia at Heritage Auctions. “Since we sold ‘The Buckner Ball’ in April of 2012 for almost $420,000, we thought this was a great opportunity to balance the scales and give collectors a chance to decide which moment is worth more.”

Curt Schilling’s world famous Bloody Sock is arguably the most hallowed artifact in Boston Red Sox lore and has been on display in the Baseball Hall of Fame since 2004. It is the perfect distillation of the amazing effort of the 2004 Red Sox. Reminiscent of Roy Hobbs' climactic scene from The Natural, a wounded Curt Schilling ignored the advice of the physician who had pieced back together the ragged tendons of his right ankle and took to the mound, first in a crucial Game Six to stave off American League Championship Series elimination against the hated New York Yankees and then again in Game Two of the World Series to claim the second victory in a four-game sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals.

In each television broadcast, the cameras repeatedly locked onto the growing red stain at Schilling's sutured push-off ankle as the star battled to victory over two elite batting line-ups and his own remarkable threshold for pain. By the time the Sox had completed their extraordinary eight-game run to turn the tide from a three-game ALCS deficit to a World Series sweep, “The Bloody Sock” was firmly implanted in American sports history as the main prop of an unbelievable script.

“Boston could win every World Series for the next hundred years, but 2004 will still be the one that everybody remembers,” said Ivy. “So I think we’re only just beginning to understand how important this piece is to the legacy of the Red Sox.”

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